Read this story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-40651951
It’s entitled, “Is WhatsApp Being Censored In China?”
I don’t know if it is, and it’s been a couple years since I lived there, but it wouldn’t surprise me. The number of apps, messaging services, and news reports being censored in China has been growing tremendously.
News that any discussion or mentions of Liu Xiaobo and the darkly shrouded circumstances of his death have been wiped from all media in China too is sad. I love China, but it absolutely is a love-hate relationship because I hate that so much information is being kept from their people.
Granted, I know the United States keeps a lot of information from its people too. And I know the United States has its share of devious politicians and machinating bureaucrats, but it’s certainly not so blatant.
I often wonder which is worse: the Chinese government censoring everything and everyone knows it, or the Western governments hiding things from us, but without most people knowing–because of course much is kept from us. Food for thought–because in China, since everything political is censored and free speech doesn’t exist, it means no one ever really has political discussions, so no friendships are lost and rarely do tempers flare over such issues. So there is a plus side–sort of.
But truky, the most chilling part of that article I just posted is that apparently China is starting to blocks the VPNs themselves. And worse, is starting to censor the content of private messsages. For the first time, I learned that WeChat (which I use to communicate with all my many friends in China) is unencrypted. Intuitively, I guess I always knew that, because I knew the Chinese government was always watching us, but I don’t think it hit me as forcefully as it did just today. They are reading all of our messages–and that’s disturbing.
Divisive Truth™ 